Class begins

Today was my first day of Chinese class and though i'm a little overwhelmed I'm very excited. There are 5 kids in my class, unlike Spanish classes in highschool and college that generally had upwards of 20. This creates a classroom environment that is intimate and interactive; I really have no chance to zone out because the teacher is 2 feet away from me and furthermore she can devote a lot of time to each of us. The class meets for 2 hours 4 times a week and by the end of the semester I will have the equivalent of a years worth of Chinese at GW. Today we formally learned the 4 tones in the Chinese language, introductions, and classroom vocabulary and sayings (such as "shenme yisi?" meaning "what does that mean?" ).

On top of our rigorous classroom schedule each student is assigned a personal Chinese tutor who we meet for 1 hour twice a week. The tutors are Chinese students here at ECNU, who are eager to help us with our Chinese in exchange for practice with their English. My tutor's name is Sun Likang, and she seems very excited to work with me. Between the 8 hours of class and 2 hours of tutoring per week as well as the infinite possibilties for practical use in Shanghai i'm very hopeful and confident that I will pick up basic language very quickly.


One final note- today we were assigned Chinese names - naturally, I asked if I could be called Yao Ming, but my teacher assured me that there is only ONE Yao Ming in this world and then assigned me a name. From now on wo jiao (my name is) - Shen Jia Xuan.